In the spring of 2014, I finally finished
retiring--50 years after I started teaching. I have now moved to
a nudist resort near Kissimmee, FL, where I serve as president of the
American Nudist Research Library, and am busy publishing some big
books. If you get down this way, be
sure to look me up. My phone is (407) 449-0574.
I grew up on a large farm in
Michigan.I must be one of the last
professors left who began my
education in a
one-room country school.(It
had no
electricity when I started.)There
were 33 in my high school graduating class.A few years ago, I dug out an
old high school term paper I
wrote on the
history of my home town, and updated it with some fresh research.You can see a short version at
www.morrice.mi.us/village_history.htm. I taught several years at
Saginaw High School in
Michigan--mostly English
and World History.The
students
were an interesting mix: 45% white, 40% black, 15% Mexican.In 1969 (5½ years
before Sail opened), I
created and directed the
Independent Study Program within Saginaw High School.A dozen whiz-kids and hippie
dropouts made arrangements
with a teacher of
their choice for an extra full-credit class through independent
study--everything from creative writing, to oceanography, to dissecting
frog
brains.Once a
week, we met in a
lunchtime seminar to share our interests.Though
participating teachers and students enjoyed the intellectual
stimulation, the
program fell apart shortly after I left there. I took time off to go
traveling around the world.In all, I have been to 63
countries in Latin America (five
times), Africa
(twice), Europe (twice), Asia (four times), Australia and the Pacific
(once).Later came
extended stays in the jungles of Belize (twice)
and in India. Based on my travel, I taught
an experimental World History
class, and
compiled enough documents to fill a book.But
I then started teaching in college, and nearly 30 years would pass
before I ever
got back into a high school World History classroom to try out the
manuscript.That opportunity came in the
spring of 2003 and 2006 at
Leon High School in Tallahassee, Florida.
The last time, I experimented with posting a lot of interesting
readings on this
web site; I've left them up for your use.Students at Leon and at Sail
have also found the
miscellaneous history
research guides useful.
I used to tell
students at those two schools, "I sometimes
teach World Humanities at FAMU.I
sometimes teach Asian Art History (mostly India) at FSU.And
when nobody wants me,
I'm here."Besides
my college teaching, I've also given several guest
lectures on Asian art and
culture in the high schools.
You can also read my report on a Buddhist
sand mandala made in
Tallahassee.
Degrees: A.B. in English (History
minor)—University of
Michigan, 1964 M.A. in
Humanities—Wayne State University, 1973 Ph.D. in
Humanities—Florida State University,
1987 major concentration: ancient
India minor concentration:
Romanticism Someday when you're in the
FSU library with nothing better
to do, you
might want to check what a dissertation looks like.Mine is shelved on the fourth
floor: NB 1002 .L48 1987
While
you're going past the reference section on the first floor, you might
also want
to look up my brief article on Sravana Belgola in the 34-volume Dictionary
of
Art: N 31 .D5 1996
You may also want to look into my
collection
of short stories, poetry, and essays: The
Orfalinda Trilogy
and Other Early
Writings. You can read
some short samples from this
and my other books
at http://www.paullevalley.com/books.
This book is available free in the Sail and Leon High School libraries,
or you can buy a copy
from me.
Over the years, I have
written more than 100 scholarly
articles, published across four continents.The
arrangement
that paid dependable money was a column on the nude in art history
for Naturally
magazine.I did that for 20 years.(You
didn't think I could survive on what they pay substitutes, did you?)The plan
from the beginning was to republish those
articles in book form. I published Art Follows Nature: A Worldwide History of
the Nude in 2016. Another book project was a collection of
documents on
the ancient Gymnosophists--or naked philosophers Alexander the Great
met in
India.(My
dissertation covered
part of the topic.)That
meeting inspired fanciful tales over the next two
thousand years--in Europe and in the Arab world.Seekers of the Naked Truth:
Collected Writings on the Gymnosophists and Related Shramana Religions was
published in 2018. I am now working on a short movie version.
In 2020, I
completed my two-volume family history that is of no interest to
anybody else. For
more than 50 years, I
have worked on genealogy.Click here for the no-longer-offered Sail
Intensive, Discover
Your Roots, as well as my big
LeValley website.Other interests include
gardening, bird watching, and
classical music. I twice offered a week of Intensive Studies
in Listening to Classical Music
at Sail.
In 2021, I published two short books of juvenile fiction. A Visit to Athens, Sparta and Olympia gives an accurate picture of growing up in ancient Greece. One Boy's Adventure in the South Seas takes place on a cannibal island and is a harem fantasy for teenage boys.
For seven
years, I wrote a series of reviews of family-friendly nudist-friendly
movies. They have now been organized into a book titled Naturist Writings of Paul LeValley, Including Movie Reviews. It includes various
other naturist essays I wrote over the years. It sold lout quickly, so I am now working on an expanded second edition.
And in 2024, I
sort of matched my Gymnosophist tome with a coffee table book, In His Own Image Created He Them: Nude Illustrations of Bible Stories. Here are a few things I
developed to help high school
students in their
writing: Parts
of speech (Grammar) Outline
form for writing an essay Good
stuff to know about footnotes
The footnote page was thrown together in one
evening, but has become one of the most popular on the
Internet--assigned by many Canadian universities, and now spreading
around the world.
